Barbecue of the different people
When: Saturday, May 14
Where: In front of Higienópolis Mall
Schedule: 2pm
Dress code: Different
*Bring beach chairs, cachaça [en], farofa [en], portable sound system, and anything you want. Mulata women smothered in tanning oil will be welcome.

José Serra, former governor of São Paulo and former presidential candidate, from the right-wing party Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), at a Churrascão barbeque. Photo by Flick user Mark Hillary (CC BY 2.0).

First of all: there was no organization. Just another statement that leaves the haters uneasy. How could such an organized and peaceful event have been controlled only by the people's initiative, with no name attached?

I do not do“pobrismos” [the glorification of the poor] – even though I question this term – neither do I believe that those who went use this term. The Churrascão served to show that the Brazilian population wants to say enough. Enough elitism, enough traffic jams, enough violence, enough anti-Semitism, enough homophobia, enough thinking that the poor (or those who think they are poor) will be heard less than a deafening elite.

An irreverent, creative protest looking like a portion of the middle class youth from Sao Paulo: well dressed, in a good mood and above all well informed and aware that in order to make the city to be better for everyone, everyone must get involved and fight for good causes. […]

I also met many residents of the Higienópolis neighborhood who are aware that the city belongs to everyone. I talked with several of them, a lady who has lived in Higienópolis for 35 years, Ms. Marivone, 80 years old, who said that she had never seen anything like it in the neighborhood and she was there attending the event and having fun with the guys. […]

I have attended many demonstrations; in some I got pepper sprayed. But there was no violence in Higienópolis and I saw the young people questioning police in an incisive way that that in a demonstration in the periphery, residents wouldn't dare to. But the police remained mostly calm, super well behaved, as we would like to see all police.

When only the wealthy and influential citizens are heard, the asymmetry of democracy in the city becomes clear.

She writes of her hope that the reaction against the decision to withdraw the construction of the subway station would provide “a counterbalance to the local residents’ expectations”. Following the massive support to the event scheduled on Facebook, the governor's reaction didn't take long:

With Churrascão, we also managed to make the prosecutors investigate the reasons behind the cancellation of the subway station in Avenida Angelica, and we even got an official statement from the governor Geraldo Alckmin.

The subway, nowadays, does not meet the need of those who live in this city. Public transportation is laughable. Crowded buses for absurd fares, vehicles in states of precariousness, lack of car lanes, delays in construction, accidents are just some of the situations that make Sao Paulo even more chaotic than it should be, thanks to its [large] population.

On the blog Imprença, the petition was compared to the project Movimento Passe Livre (Free Pass Movement), which gathered about 3 thousand people in protest for the reduction of the bus ticket prices in Sao Paulo promoted by students who even got to be attacked by the police, as Global Voices reported early this year.

The result? Many marches, a scheduled and unscheduled public hearing, detentions, etc.. Did the price drop? No. […] So the people from the neighborhood Higienópolis {{yes, it does come from Hygiene}} gathered 3500 SIGNATURES without anyone leaving home … The governor decided to do what?! He CANCELED the subway station of the place.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and Urbanist, Raquel Rolnikshared her opinion on her blog:

The main issue in all this is the way in which the whole decision process is made, concerning new stations and lines: they keep being announced and unannounced without stable planning coupled with an urban strategy collectively agreed upon in the city. And therefore with the taste of pressure by the [special] interests that can get to the decision-making table.

Thanks Sara/Janet for translating this post! Since I heard about the protest, I have been wondering about the best way to convey “gente diferenciada” in English – why not “differentiated persons”? I think it would sound as weird and funny as in Portuguese!